Four Barrel rushes to rebrand, scraping tainted name off...

1of 4Sarah Jane Bouldin removes the Four Barrel Coffee name from the front window, Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2018, in San Francisco, Calif. Days after the S.F. Chronicle�s investigative piece surrounding a sexual harassment lawsuit filed against Four Barrel and the company�s founder Jeremy Tooker, the embattled coffee roaster has announced it will change its name and plans to transition into an entity that�s 100 percent employee-owned. The new company will be called the Tide.Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

2of 4Justin Teisl, a barista and art curator, makes a customer’s coffee at the cafe formerly known as Four Barrel Coffee on Valencia Street in San Francisco. The old name is crossed out on the menu behind him.Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle

3of 4Drew Winget, a regular customer at Four Barrel Coffee, as its window-display name has been crossed out by employees, Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2018, in San Francisco, Calif. Days after the S.F. Chronicle�s investigative piece surrounding a sexual harassment lawsuit filed against Four Barrel and the company�s founder Jeremy Tooker, the embattled coffee roaster has announced it will change its name and plans to transition into an entity that�s 100 percent employee-owned. The new company will be called the Tide.Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

Four Barrel isn’t just a cafe. It is a wholesale supplier to coffee shops around the country, training baristas and selling everything from coffee mugs to pens emblazoned with its logo.

So now that its name has suddenly become associated with allegations of sexual misconduct by founder Jeremy Tooker, how does it move on?

It’s been nearly a week since eight women accused Tooker of sexual misconduct in a lawsuit filed after a two-month Chronicle investigation — and the popular San Francisco coffee roaster is scrambling to rebrand itself while keeping its customers. The company announced Monday that Tooker is surrendering his 50 percent stake and that it plans to become an employee-owned company under a new, temporary name, the Tide.

Easier said than done. There is still so much to do, said Brian Thomas, the company’s head of operations.

Since the Tide is only a placeholder — a meeting is planned to select a permanent name — how much effort does the company put into building that brand? When do its leaders redirect their website and change their social media handles? And what do they do with all the leftover Four Barrel merchandise?

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Sarah Jane Bouldin removes the Four Barrel Coffee name from the front window in San Francisco.

Video: Santiago Mejia / SF Chronicle

“There are so many things to consider,” said Thomas, who struggled on how to identify his employer — “the Tide” or “Four Barrel” — when he spoke with The Chronicle. “Anything that has or hasn’t happened yet is because there is so much to figure out.”

The lawsuit against Four Barrel and Tooker alleges that Tooker harassed and sexually assaulted female employees over the course of years. The names of eight former employees appear in the suit, two as plaintiffs, all speaking of a workplace where sexual misconduct was widespread.

On Wednesday, black tape formed X’s over the Four Barrel logo at its Valencia Street cafe, and a worker started to chisel the logo off a window. A new Instagram account and website feature a letter from the remaining owners, Jodi Geren and Tal Mor, explaining the changes the company is making. But both are bare-bones; the company is still trying to figure out what the official name will be, Thomas said.

Four Barrel crossed out on its menu.

Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle

Specialists in crisis communications say Four Barrel has a long road ahead. David Landis, president of Landis Communications, said company leaders should offer incentives for customers to keep coming to their shops, and maybe even run a campaign that says they are going to donate some proceeds to antiharassment groups.

“You have to be transparent to customers,” he said. “What measures have they taken to make sure that this won’t happen again?”

After the allegations against Tooker became public, customers called for boycotts of Four Barrel, leading businesses to distance themselves from the roaster and say they will no longer sell its coffee.

But that’s not that easy, either.

Richard Tarlov, owner of Canyon Market in San Francisco, which has sold Four Barrel coffee for years, said he has lost sleep over whether to distance himself from Four Barrel.

“We’re as concerned and alarmed as anyone on these issues,” he said. “But do we want to just make a knee-jerk reaction and drop the supplier because we want to send a message?”

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Canyon Market sells Four Barrel’s coffee and uses equipment serviced by Four Barrel personnel. And changing coffee beans isn’t as simple as pulling different bags of beans off the shelf: First Tarlov has to find a big enough supply, and then baristas have to recalibrate the machines and taste-test the new coffee.

“It’s not something you can do in an hour,” he said. “These are things that people don’t think about. ... I can’t just snap my fingers and start offering something else.”

But for others, like Boba Guys, the bubble milk tea chain from San Francisco, the decision was more straightforward.

Four Barrel is its only supplier in San Francisco, said co-founder Bin Chen, and the company even has a specialty blend made for it. He has friends who work there. But he couldn’t take the chance and continue doing business with them.

“We’ve always been about super radical transparency, but that might not be enough these days. It might be about radical accountability,” he said. “Even our vendors have to be held to a standard.”

Trisha Thadani is a City Hall reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle. She previously covered work-based immigration and local startups for the paper’s business section.

Thadani graduated from Boston University with a degree in journalism. Before joining The Chronicle, she held internships at The Boston Globe, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and was a Statehouse correspondent for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.